(Almost) every Saturday we review all Kickstarter campaigns in the "Games" category ending in the next two weeks. Any we think are notable for some reason are curated here. This is written from the perspective of people looking to buy games and game accessories that offer interesting mechanics or ideas. We prefer heavy strategy games, miniature-heavy games, and games with real-time mechanics as opposed to party games, children's games, or light strategy games.

We Backed

Sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. These are the campaigns we backed in this batch.

This is a really neat collection of comic-based choose your own adventure game books. This is one of my favorite types of game types, so it's great to see game books being reincarnated in so many forms. (Wildly popular 7th Continent also uses the game book formula.)

Not only does this innovate by using comic book panels for telling the story, but it also introduces the idea of achievements which is a great way to enhance replayability of one-off game books.

When I was a kid in the 80s, the only solo RPG gaming experience we had was video games and game books. Now we have some really heavy weight solo RPG board games entering the mix. I think Gloomhaven was the first one to show the potential of this type of game, and Unbroken has blown this genre wide-open.

With moderate production values, no campaign mode, and no miniatures, Unbroken has managed to raise over $300K on Kickstarter. From a Kickstarter creator's perspective, this game shows how a moderately successful first created game can really blow out a game that has potential as a follow-up. Clearly designer Artem Safarov has quite a few fans of his first game, Cauldron (BGG 7.2), and he used his mailing list from that campaign to get huge momentum on Unbroken. With very reasonable price point, backing is a no-brainer and he already has over 10,000 jumping on board for a solo-only board game.

Board Games

Hexplore It: The Forests of Adrimon

We backed the first version of Hexplore It, and reviewed it this week. It's a fun adventure game with some really interesting character building concepts. This extends the game even further adding tons of new races and classes, as well as a whole new scenario to test your mettle.

This is another game we backed the original version of on Kickstarter. Gothic Horrors extends the experience adding new class decks, monsters and locations. We did a thorough review of this project earlier this week.

We had originally backed Mobster Metropolis, but this is a very ambitious project for a first-time creator, and while the game looks like nice, heavy strategy, we don't know if this is going to ever come out over Corleone's Empire when we're looking for an epic mobster game to play.

We are looking forward to the reviews when the game comes out, and we may get on board then if they are positive.

This is a simple co-op game that appears to have been designed for young people (based on the aesthetics and theme), but is actually a fairly complicated game. We played this on Tabletopia, and while we think it's good (in particular the art), the gameplay itself is a bit straightforward and repetitive.

A card game about corporate espionage, this had some big fans in it's original iteration. The only complaint was the lack of content in the base game. This expansion appears to work towards solving that, and it's a standalone game as well. The original game and this expansion are packaged together for $44, and it sounds like if you are going to get the game, you should get both. However, the original is available on Amazon in stock for less than $17.

This looks kind of like a miniatures version of Duel of Ages II (but with a full co-op mode, and less weird.)

The game's publisher is a first created, but it's raised an astounding 500,000 which reinforces what FOMO can do for a campaign. The game has tons of Kickstarter exclusives that are likely fueling it's extraordinary success.

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*None of the campaigns mentioned here are sponsored or influenced via payment, prize or other means. If we know or have a connection to someone running the campaign, we will mention it in the campaign notes. If there is a campaign you think should be mentioned here, please e-mail us and tell us what makes it special and we'll review!